Beyond the Veil: an illustrated talk by author Paul Gambino

Paul Gambino is coming to Abney Park Chapel on Tuesday 20 October for Beyond the Veil, an illustrated talk that takes Victorian mourning culture and asks why death became such a defining feature of the era. It's based on his book of the same name, and the setting — a chapel inside Abney Park Cemetery — fits the subject matter perfectly.

Gambino starts with the grim realities of the time: overcrowded cities, dangerous working conditions, poor sanitation, and epidemics of cholera and tuberculosis. From there, he looks at how the Victorians responded with elaborate mourning fashions and etiquette, hair jewellery, memento mori, death masks, post-mortem photography, extravagant funerals, and Gothic cemeteries. The talk then moves beyond the grave and into Spiritualism, with séances, mediums, and spirit photography blurring the lines between science, faith, and the supernatural.

There's also a bit of a bonus: Gambino includes 'the missing chapter' from the book, A Fate Worse Than Death: Defining Insanity in the Victorian Mind, which looks at Victorian attitudes towards madness and asylums. It's a good companion to the rest of the evening, shifting the focus from how they dealt with death to how they understood the mind.

Gambino is an internationally published author who specialises in the macabre, with titles like Morbid Curiosities, Skulls: Portraits of the Dead and the Stories They Tell, Killer Collections, and The Art of Gothic Living. The talk runs from 19:00 to 21:00 at the chapel in Abney Park Cemetery, 219 Stoke Newington High Street, London N16 0LH, and tickets are £13.